Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Cut Guns Budget To Fund More Treatment for Mental Health & Addiction

Would we allow hospital emergency rooms to refuse care to someone suffering their upteenth cardiac episode? Would we insist that a diabetic serve time in jail if their lack of self-care resulted in a car accident? What if the cost of treatment and incarceration resulted in their losing everything so that they ended up on the streets? We wouldn't allow that to happen. Yet, we do this every day to the alcoholic, the drug addict, and the individual with other mental illnesses.

"The level of Americans' prejudice and discrimination toward people with serious mental illness or substance abuse problems didn't change over 10 years, a new study has found." Here's a link to the entire article, http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/643146.html.

That's the nearly 10 years I've been away from the alcohol, tobacco and other drug policy arena. A couple weeks ago, circumstances came together to show me just how true the study's findings are. I thought surely intelligent, educated people would generally understand by now that alcoholism and drug addiction are brain dysfunctions - they barely understand that it's an inheritable disease.

It's this prejudice and discrimination that keeps people from getting the help and support they need to recover and rejoin society, to live healthy lives. It contributes to the dark shame and secrecy that binds families to the suffering and drama. It's keeps us in ignorance about an inheritable disease - if cancer runs in your family don't you learn more about it and take steps to maintain your help?

So, when I received this email today from Friends Committee on National Legislation - that's a Quaker lobbying organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. - its advocacy work "connects historic Quaker testimonies on peace, equality, simplicity, and truth with peace and social justice issues which the United States government is or should be addressing." They are urging us to make sure our congresspeople have signed onto a letter to the Deficit Commission urging them to include cuts to the military budget when figuring out how to reduce the budget deficit.

To find out more, follow this link - http://www.fcnl.org/issues/item.php?item_id=4020&issue_id=18

Well, I say cut! cut! cut! away at the military's overstuffed budget. More money should go to prevention and treatment (and raising public knowledge about) of these awful diseases.

We need to help people learn to live, not learning them to die!



Saturday, February 13, 2010

I can't tell you if God exists

I don't know how to answer the question, does God exist?, but I do know this...

God is a loaded term - my shorthand for a transcendent force for good, that exists in every living thing, in our planet and through the cosmos.

There is that of God in every child, woman, and man.

I have been wondering if my experience of God, inner experience of this transcendence, Light, can be communicated to others. My God is all shapes and beings and none. I heard others tell of a God who acts with benevolence to some and with vengence to others - mine does not act in that way. God works from within and through each of us, and thus acting together the experience and power of this God exceeds the experience and power of one person.

I do know God is Love, because when I experience or observe acts of kindness and love in others and myself, they seem holy to me. Meanwhile I don't have that holy experience when I experience or observe others (or myself) behaving cruelly, selfishly, hatefully. So I don't believe in a God who supports retribution, oppression, and the domination of others.

Recently, I read this excerpt from the writings of an early Quaker, Isaac Penington, and it articulated how I experience the moving of the Light, of that transcendent force with-In and with-Out:

“What is the nature of the seed of God, or the seed of the kingdom?...4. It is of a seasoning, leavening, sanctifying nature. It is like salt, it is like leaven. It seasons and leavens with life. It seasons and leavens with righteousness. It seasons and leavens with the image of God. So soon as ever it springs in the heart, it begins to leaven it; and if it be not snubbed, or grieved, or hurt, or quenched (for it is of a most sensible, tender nature), it will go on leavening more and more wit he the nature of truth, into the likeness of the God of truth (Mark ix. 50; Luke xiii. 21; Col. iv.6)” From the writings of an early Quaker, Isaac Penington (1617-1679).

I may not experience any more mercy or good fortune in this life, but in deepening my relationship with God, my experience of bad and good fortune or sorrow and joy is leavened as the yeast working in bread dough lifts it up, gives it resilience, fosters its inner strength, and makes it tasty!

Monday, January 11, 2010

Do You Have to be a Hero to do Your Human Duty?

http://preview.tinyurl.com/ybro9jb

Miep Gies died at 100 years. "I don't want to be considered a hero," she said in a 1997 online chat with schoolchildren."Imagine young people would grow up with the feeling that you have to be a hero to do your human duty. I am afraid nobody would ever help other people, because who is a hero? I was not. I was just an ordinary housewife and secretary."

As we approach the birthday and celebration of the life of Martin Luther King, Jr, I think how he has been co-oped into convincing us that we need a Messiah in order for change and right action to take place. For one, Martin Luther King, Jr. was a real radical - more radical than the "celebrity" that we're given every third Monday in January. And, secondly, the progress that the civil rights movement made is attributable to a lot of ordinary and unknown people like Miep Gies. Martin Luther King, Jr. was just one of them.

Doing our human duty, whether it is marching in support of immigrants, speaking up for those in prison, giving a panhandler a kind word, or witnessing for policies that respect the dignity of each person...one wouldn't think courage would be necessary in order to do that.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

The Personal Hi-Lights of the Last Decade


Perhaps by listing the highlights of the past decade, 2000 -2009, they will explain a bit about me. Here they are as they occurred to me, and this is not an exhaustive list:


  • Lived on two coasts and in the middle.

  • Lived in New York City and Brooklyn for short periods.

  • Visited Japan, the first foreign country (not counting Canada) that I have visited.

  • Learning Qi Gong.

  • Became a more knowledgeable citizen, learning more about public finance and economic development and housing as an advocate for the field of California redevelopment. I learned more about subjects I would not have learned otherwise.

  • My daughter graduated from high school AND college with honors.

  • Learned to knit and picked up crochetting again, and have been busy ever since.

  • Participated in some great grassroots efforts with Drug-Free Indiana and The Eyes Wide Open (or "Boots") Project (in Sacramento), meeting great people and working with them to make positive change happen.

  • Earned my Masters of Public Administration.

  • Participating in two ballot initiative campaigns - successful, which makes it more fun of course.

  • Learned to live without television - surprising how easy it has been.

  • Becoming a better pet owner. Gave up two cats and took on two more a long the way, and learned some things in the process.

  • The 2008 Presidential Campaign! That was fun, and affirming!

  • Cynicism is losing its cool.

  • Becoming a member of Sacramento Friends Meeting. Attended Quaker meetings in Washington, D.C., New York City, Brooklyn, San Jose (CA), Seattle, Bloomington (IN), San Francisco, Berkeley, and Vancouver (BC). Not to mention Friends General Conference in Tacoma, Washington, and College Park Quarterly Meeting in Grass Valley, CA.

  • Became a Great Aunt.